


If a Thing Loves

by laireshi



Category: Devil May Cry
Genre: ...this is not an unhappy fic, Angst, Gen, Implied/Referenced Suicide
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-13
Updated: 2019-09-13
Packaged: 2020-10-17 10:37:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,246
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20619641
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/laireshi/pseuds/laireshi
Summary: Dante and the Yamato have a chat about Vergil. They both love him, after all.





	If a Thing Loves

**Author's Note:**

> Title from this quote by Blake: “If a thing loves, it is infinite.” 
> 
> As I said to Des, this is basically a 2k love letter to the Yamato, because I love her a lot.

Headache pounding behind his eyes, Dante forces himself to walk through the forest. There aren’t any clear paths, but then he doesn’t need one to find what he’s looking for—or _who_, to be exact. He’d gotten separated with Vergil the moment they’d set foot among the trees; the headache started a few steps later. Dante focused on the bond between them—once so strong and so obvious it was like another sense, this awareness of Vergil’s mood and location, then ripped out of them both during the attack. It’d never come back during their teenage years, but it is there once again now, weaker than it used to be, no longer conveying their emotions, but still enough to pinpoint Vergil’s whereabouts. 

Only, Dante had barely stepped into the forest, and somehow Vergil is already far away from him.

Frowning, Dante keeps on, treks between the too-closely growing trees and arms himself with Balrog to safely push away the growth. Nothing tries to kill him other than his continued headache, but he stays on guard. He’s in hell; nowhere is safe. 

He walks for what feels like hours; is probably an hour top in reality. Longer than he’d like, but Vergil’s position doesn’t change. He knows he’s steadily getting closer, so he doesn’t transform to try and fly over the trees, worried that whatever magic is acting here will make him lose the thread connecting them.

When he finally finds his brother, it’s to see him laying on the ground and a demon leaning over him. 

He doesn’t waste time trying to talk to it: he might like playing with his prey, but it’s _Vergil_ there, and Dante won’t risk him getting so much as scratched when he’s unconscious. He summons his sword to attack the demon and is immediately thrown back, his back hitting a tree. Something moves too fast for him to track and he gasps in pain as he’s pinned to the trunk with a blade that feels sharp enough to cut his soul out if he moves wrongly. 

It’s a familiar sensation.

He frowns and lets himself really look at the demon. It’s humanoid in appearance, tall and slender. Long hair, deep dark blue like the midnight sky, flows down its back. Its head is tilted, completely golden eyes without human-looking pupils or irises looking at him with something not unlike amusement. The blade Dante’s impaled on turns out to be one of its claws, long and lethal. It’s absolutely stunning, promising a swift death to her enemies, and yet Dante is still alive.

And the way it’s leaning over Vergil isn’t threatening, no; it’s protective.

Dante connects the dots. “Yamato?”

She smiles at him with a mouth full of silver teeth looking as sharp as her claws. “He does often complain that you charge in without thinking.”

She’d never spoken to him on the rare occasions he wielded her and he wonders if her voice would sound the same in his head as it does now: both smoky and metallic in a way. Pleasant. 

He’s got no idea as to how she even is able to present herself in this form, no longer locked into a katana, but she clearly doesn’t mean to abandon them, so he files the question for later. He gestures at the claw still impaling him. She hasn’t hit any organ—he should be grateful for that, he supposes; it’s more care than Vergil has ever given him—but being pinned to a tree trunk and slowly bleeding is still decidedly uncomfortable.

She lets him go, the claw shortening in the space of a second, though it is with a wistful expression. “Your blood always feels good, Son of Sparda.” 

“Is that why your master keeps stabbing me?” 

“That is just your inability to evade us.”

So _that’s_ why Vergil gets along with his weapon so well, Dante decides. They’re both complete assholes.

She kneels at Vergil’s side once more, touching one hand to his cheek with gentleness Dante wouldn’t guess she’s capable of, but then, it is her wielder. Her devotion to him is clear in her every breath as she looks him over carefully.

Dante tries to come closer and is stopped in his tracks when Yamato hisses at him. 

He raises his hands in a conciliatory manner. “I won’t hurt him, you know.”

“You said you would kill him.” Her eyes are as cold as her blade feels. “You did, once, when I was unable to be at his side.”

Figures she’d be able to cut with her words as deeply as with her blade. Vergil is like that too. It’s a small mercy that he prefers to speak with his weapon and not his words.

Dante gets a stupid idea to explain himself to her, because she’s the only person in the world who can truly understand what losing Vergil feels like, but . . . There’s no point. There’s no explanation that he can give that would be good enough; no excuses for how he didn’t recognise his own identical twin until it was too late. He can’t even forgive himself; he knows better than to hope for her forgiveness. 

And yet . . . 

“So why don’t you want to kill me?” She would’ve gone for his heart if the urge was there, after all, even if she was aware she couldn’t have succeeded. He’s hard to kill, even for himself.

She presses her lips to Vergil’s forehead. “You are his other part and he loves you. I will cease to exist before I do anything to hurt him.”

Ouch. 

“You’re a demon. No vengeful feelings? Just a little bit?” 

Her lips curl up. She slides one hand down to rest it over Vergil’s heart. “My revenge is reserved for someone else.” 

She doesn’t need to speak the name. Her expression is dark and bloodthirsty in a way even Dante doesn’t feel about the demon king, a reminder that for all her love and care for Vergil, she is an ancient demon—and one with a grudge. If they ever face Mundus again, Vergil will wield her, and together they will obliterate the so-called Prince of Darkness. 

“Okay, so if you won’t let me approach, how about you tell me what’s wrong with him?” Dante wants to touch Vergil and check him over, but he’s not about to fight his brother’s beloved weapon for it. 

She tilts her head to the side like a predator watching her prey; a sensation made worse tenfold by the fact that she never blinks. “He will be all right. He merely needs time.”

Dante throws his arms up in frustration. “It’s not some _weakness_ you have to hide from me,” he snaps. “I wielded you in Fortuna. You were in my head. You _know_ how I felt when he was gone.”

He thought she looked cold before, but her expression shifts to so icy Dante half-expects his blood to freeze in his veins. He steels himself for an attack, but she just clutches at Vergil instead, despair lacing her moves.

“So I was,” she agrees, and something in her voice reminds him of the expanse of the ocean: seemingly calm and absolutely deadly in its depths, at odds with how softly she’s touching Vergil. “Do you wish to know what I saw in your thoughts, Son of Sparda?”

Dante swallows, suddenly rather sure that no, he doesn’t. 

“I was taken from him when he was still _himself_, and in my last moments, I wished for nothing else but for him to survive. And then you wielded me, and I saw him, my master, my beloved, trapped in a black armour. I saw him tear the helmet off, and I witnessed what Mundus did to him when I was unable to protect him.” She cards fingers of one hand through Vergil’s hair and cradles his head. “I saw you kill him, _Dante_.”

He shivers at the way she speaks his name, so similar in her inflection to Vergil. No one else pronounces it quite like that, and he tries to focus on the familiarity in that and not the sudden pain piercing his heart at the reminder of Mallet Island. (Like he goes a day without remembering.)

Eventually, he does answer. He respects Yamato enough to offer her honesty instead of a deflection he would give anyone else. “I have spent years wishing our fates were reversed.” 

She moves faster than even her master does; is standing and in Dante’s space before he even finishes speaking. She rests her claws on his chest, deceptively lightly. If only she extended them again, she could carve his heart out. 

He forces himself to stay still. She's Vergil's: Dante won't fight her.

“You asked why I did not want to kill you,” she drawls. “I am a sword. I never lie. Yet, there is more to my answer.”

Dante exhales softly. He knows she won't truly harm him, but he's never been so scared as in this moment.

“I am _his_ sword. And he has never wielded me with the intention to kill you.” She digs her claws in, just enough to draw blood. “Do not speak so hastily about discarding your own life.”

He stops breathing, her words not making any sense to him. He’d fought Vergil so many times, and he had meant to kill him; had succeeded, just like she said.

That Vergil did not share his fratricidal intentions is inconceivable. 

Which one of them is truly a monster, Dante wonders.

In the space of a heartbeat, she’s back at Vergil’s side; Dante’s again missed her actually moving. Vergil twitches, and she murmurs something soothing to him that Dante cannot make out even with his superhuman senses; his brother settles in again. 

She wouldn’t lie about Vergil needing help, but that doesn’t mean Dante’s any less worried. 

“Please tell me,” he asks again, unsettled by her words but forcing himself to focus on Vergil’s immediate well-being for now.

“You claim you care for him.” She holds Vergil’s palm in her hand now, clearly possessive. “Did you not notice he does not sleep?”

Dante frowns, thinks of their past weeks. He needs less rest here than in the human world, feels so good in hell that it’s rather unsettling when he thinks about it for too long—barring the forest he’s in right now, of course—but he slept a few times when they paused in their wanderings. Vergil would sit next to him, sometimes, but every time Dante woke up, Vergil was already standing, his back straight and his hand on the Yamato’s hilt. 

Had he truly never rested until now?

Dante’s headache hasn’t really gone away; he wonders if Vergil felt it too and succumbed to pain and exhaustion when the forest surrounded them. 

“He used me to cut the nightmares out, but I could not do what he asked for; not completely. Not without destroying him.” Grief and guilt mix in her voice, both feelings that should be alien to a demon.

“I’m sorry,” Dante mutters. “I should’ve noticed.”

“Yes,” Yamato says, and yeah, yeah, nothing quite like a sword guilt-tripping him. 

Dante sighs, sits down with his legs crossed. “I will do better now,” he vows both to her and himself. “I’ll protect him this time.”

“He needs not your protection.” She rests her free hand on Vergil’s cheek, and Vergil leans into her touch in his sleep with absolute trust. “But he does need you not to be his enemy.”

Dante bristles at the words. It’s so damn _unfair_: he’s not the one who almost destroyed the world twice in his pursuit of power. He’s only ever fought Vergil because Vergil forced his hand. But this is Yamato speaking. She has one master, and he’s the object of her unwavering loyalty. Dante cannot, will not discuss about what’s fair concerning Vergil with her.

He bows his head and says nothing. He can’t promise what she’s asking, not really, but she must know that much. He can promise himself to try and be better at this whole twin brother thing, now that he’s lost Vergil and miraculously got him back.

He hates doing nothing, but he settles in to wait for his brother to wake, watching his sword take care of him when he can’t do it himself. Every time he so much as twitches, she strokes his arm or touches his cheek or whispers something into his ear; every time, Vergil relaxes immediately.

He finally opens his eyes hours later; his hand immediately goes to his waist, and there the Yamato is, once again just a beautiful katana tied at his side. 

“Morning, brother,” Dante says.

“There are no mornings in hell, Dante,” Vergil informs him as he sits up. “What happened to you?”

Dante looks at his torn shirt and his own blood on it, grins at Vergil and doesn’t reply. He can’t imagine the Yamato keeping secrets from him, but it’s not Dante’s place to tell.

Vergil tilts his head and then smiles, one of his elusive honest smiles, and strokes his sword’s hilt.

That’s that, then, Dante decides, and gets up. “Your sword is pretty great.” 

“Yes.” It might be the only time Vergil’s agreed with Dante without any arguments. He stands too. “She’s a great judge of character, too. She does find you rather irksome, brother.”

Assholes, both of them, Dante thinks fondly once more. It is good Vergil has her.

They keep going.

**Author's Note:**

> This fic also has a [twitter post](https://twitter.com/tonytears/status/1172316197917876224).


End file.
